


Estella, Unfeeling

by firstaudrina



Category: Great Expectations - Dickens
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 18:51:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Estella does not feel things as course and common as love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Estella, Unfeeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zorrie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorrie/gifts).



Estella does not feel things as course and common as love.

 

She is not moved by the tiny grasping hands of infants or the padded paws of kittens. Her adopted mother is as grotesque to her as rotted food, something left for so long that the mold has consumed it. Her affections for men are passing twinges in her stomach; she feels attraction, sometimes, but nothing more or less than that.

 

She is attracted to Pip, that ridiculous boy, and she does not mind his presence, but she does not love him.

 

Estella does not feel love for living creatures.

 

Estella does feel love for her things, each one a mark of her accomplishments. The pearl-backed brush from her first admirer is still the loveliest brush she has ever owned; the jewels from Bentley are hard-won delights she sports with only a modicum of bitterness. She has glorious dresses from her adopted mother and fashionable furniture. She has as many books as she can buy and she enjoys their company far more than that of people, though books are often too sentimental for her taste.

 

Estella knows that she is beautiful; this is not something that is in contest.

 

-

 

_"So," said Estella, "I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me._"

 

-

 

She does not remember much of childhood, of games and fairytales. It seems to Estella that she has always been that which she is, born an abstraction of a woman and remaining one for all her days.

 

She remembers the dark, and the flickering of candlelight on old bits of lace. She remembers weeds in the garden and, quite distinctly, the feeling of disdain. She doesn't know when she learned what to call it, but she remembers distaste and condescension and a certain sense that she was different, better.

 

Estella separates her emotions like she separates her jewelry, each piece going into its own box, some pieces better than others. Her good jewels are her diamonds; her better feelings are her contempt, her distance. Her poorest jewels are flashy lumps of glass; her worse feelings are rushes of heat in her chest, are nameless.

 

-

 

_"You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a beautiful woman might, "that I have no heart – if that has anything to do with my memory."_

 

-

 

She often thinks, looking into Pip's sad eyes, how very fond of him she is. It is not a thought that inspires much happiness in her. In his face is the little boy she first met, startlingly so, and while Estella often chastises herself for allowing nostalgia, she cannot help it. He is such an embarrassment; no one she has yet had the displeasure of meeting wears their hearts in their eyes as he does. He practically begs to be beaten like a dog.

 

He is like a child and unsuitable for that reason if no other. His hair even falls into his face like a child's, as if he could not be bothered to locate his comb in the morning.

 

Estella does not love Pip and she does not think of him. She does not.

 

-

 

_"Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?"_

_"Yes, and many others – all of them but you."_

_-_

The secret to flirtation is becoming an ideal. There is nothing she knows better than that; she has been instructed in the art of transformation since before she could crawl and men are so very simple. She only has to smile and coyly hide her face behind a fan, eyes glittering above the painted silk flowers. A hand on the bend of an arm, a glove tugged off to reveal a soft white hand – simple tricks, like learning a new card game. All of these men know that knaves are knaves and not jacks; all of these men are without occupation or use. They are as empty as the space in her chest where her heart would go, nothing behind their eyes but the promise of her love.

 

Which is nothing, of course. Her love is like glass; it fetches no price.

 

She thinks of cards as she lies to them with her slanting eyes, of her adopted mother's dry, wrinkled hands against her throat, fastening a clasp. _This will be yours someday_, she murmurs as the necklace weighs heavily on Estella's young throat, both of them eyeing Pip like a fascinating insect.

 

Estella brushes her hair to softness every night and puts herself to sleep amongst lace and satin. She knows that knaves are knaves.

 

-

 

_"Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching…. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape."_

_-_

Bentley does not lay a hand on her but once.

 

It is the morning after their wedding. She is not coy with him, but sharp, and he rewards her with a blow across the face. He is setting the laws and edicts by which she must learn to live and she will know them every time she peers into the glass and touches the yellowing spot of soreness upon her cheek. The blow was a lesson and a promise. He does not have to strike her again, merely threaten it. He will slam a palm against the table next to her, sending her glass shattering on the ground. He will scream at her, so close that flecks of spittle decorate the delicate skin of her face. He will shred her gowns and deny her food for days, deny her sleep.

 

He learns his lessons from literature. She would be impressed if she were not full of contempt for herself.

 

Bentley kisses her afterward, always, his mouth hot against her cool lips. Estella learns a lesson in silence, in keeping her thoughts to herself. Once she raged and scratched. Now she is quiet, quite picturesque.

 

She does not know that she is with child the first time until it rushes from her in torrents of violent red. The gown she is wearing is red; her jewels are golden. Her eyes are dark and she does not feel anything, Bentley screaming that she is a witch and worse. She wonders what she would do with a child – raise it in the glittering dark, experience sadness when it is ill and regret when it cannot love her?

 

-

 

_"We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench._

_"And will continue friends apart," said Estella._

 

-

 

She would sometimes like to touch Pip, no more than an icy gloved hand on his cheek, a misplaced malapropism of a gesture.

 

She had gone to the garden to see if she might find something of herself there, shards of the creature Estella amongst the old stones and straggling grass. She gets dirt on her hem and not much more, an eyeful of horizon and rising bile in her throat.

 

The girl that was Estella had been left in the fire until she was red hot and then reworked into some new shape. She cannot move in her new form, cannot control her limbs and thoughts and make them work towards a unified purpose. She is rather like a foal newborn, ungainly and inexperienced.

 

As she and Pip pass the rusted garden gate, Estella pauses and says, "You may kiss me if you like."

 

Her tone is not haughty, but peculiarly faint, hardly a spoken sound and more a wind. Pip stops where he is and turns to face her; there is no smile on his mouth. He lays a blacksmith's hand upon her face, rough and worked. He presses his mouth to her cheek as he takes her hand, leading her away from Satis House and whatever is left of her inside of its decaying walls.

 

She falls into step beside him and does not ask where they are going, or if they are going, or anything.


End file.
